Shows / Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Episodes
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Turnabout
An “enigma in praise of women,” from an 1820 miscellany: Happy that man may pass his life, Who’s free from matrimonial chains; Who is…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Black and White
By Mrs. W.J. Baird. White to mate in two moves. SelectClick for Answer White wins with the quiet. 1. Qe2! Then: 1. … Kd5 2. Nb4# 1. … b4 2. Nf4# 1…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
An Orderly Vacation
A puzzle from Peter Winkler’s excellent Mathematical Puzzles (2021): A certain island contains a network of roads. Each road segment (between one…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Road Thoughts
A puzzle by Sam Loyd: Here is a pretty problem which I figured out during a ride from Bixley to Quixley astride a razor-back mule. I asked Don Pedro, a native…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Succinct
A puzzle by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, from the October 1991 issue of Games magazine: You’re visiting a familiar island on which each resident either…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Scrap Mettle
In 1882, Lewis Carroll invented a game he called MischMash: The essence of this game consists in one player proposing a ‘nucleus’ (i.e., a set of…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
“Tracking the Fugitives”
From the Strand, December 1903: These tracks were left by a man in flight leading a child. “In order to throw his pursuers off the trail the man changed…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Turnabout
A puzzle by A. Khalamaizer: Move three of these circles to make the triangle point downward. SelectClick for Answer From the July-August 1996 issue of Quantum…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Black and White
I don’t know who devised this; I found it in The Batsford Chess Puzzle Book (2002). Black has only a king and a bishop, while White still has all 16 of…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Pardon?
What word has kst in the middle, and at the end, and in at the beginning? SelectClick for Answer Inkstand.
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Dead Man’s Chest
Five pirates of different ages want to divide a treasure of 100 gold coins. They agree that the oldest among them will propose how to divide the coins, and…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Spin Doctor
I have 13 magnetic tapes on reels; one empty reel; and a machine that can unwind a tape from a full reel onto an empty one, reversing the tape’s…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Kakuro
This logic puzzle is the numerical equivalent of a crossword. Each white cell in the diagram is to be filled with a digit from the range 1-9. The sum of each…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Self-Study
A puzzle from the October 1962 issue of Eureka, the journal of the Cambridge University Mathematical Society: (a) At least two of these statements, apart from…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Orb Weaver
An elegant alphametic by Jonathan Joseph, from the October 1991 issue of Games magazine: VENUS MARS SATURN + URANUS -------- NEPTUNE If each letter…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Flight From Moscow
Russian chess master Alexander Petrov composed this puzzle to commemorate Napoleon’s defeat in 1812: Currently the emperor stands in Moscow, on h7. The…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
For Short
In 2007 I posted this cryptic verse by William Whewell: U 0 a 0 but I 0 U, O 0 no 0 but O 0 me; O let not my 0 a 0 go, But give 0 0 I 0 U so. You sigh for a…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Checkmate
A puzzle by A. Savin, from the July-August 1996 issue of Quantum: A mother, her brother, her daughter, and her son take part in a family chess tournament. Two…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Around the World
A brainteaser from the British intelligence agency GCHQ: Explain the following: falkun, home de guerra, kick, lavoro, moed, mosca, raccordement, schafer…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
CyberChance
A puzzle by National Security Agency applied research mathematician Nicholas R., from the agency’s October 2016 Puzzle Periodical: Eddie, Layne, Kurt…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Tile Swap
You’re tiling a floor with 4×1 and 2×2 tiles when you accidentally break one. A tile of the other shape is available. Show that it’s not…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Black and White
Alexey Khanyan devised this “no-brainer” in 2008. Black is in check. His only legal response is to interpose one of his knights, which then checks…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Portrait
A problem from Joseph Madachy’s Mathematics on Vacation (1966): If these statements are all true, what can we deduce about Major Perkins? Only…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Level-Headed
A puzzle by Russian mathematician Boris Kordemsky: A house has 6 stories, each the same height. How many times as long is the ascent to the sixth floor as the…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Poser
Unusually, this puzzle may be easier for older readers. The answer is R, the reverse gear on a manual gearshift.
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
The Europa Redux Manuscript
In 2020 Brooklyn’s Honey & Wax Bookseller came into possession of a strange manuscript consisting of 7,000 illustrations, each 3 centimeters square…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
The Magic Hat Puzzler
An old puzzle from the Car Talk radio show on NPR: You and I each draw a number from a magic hat. We don’t know each other’s numbers, but the hat…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Long Distance
In this classic puzzle by Florencio Mendes de Moraes, White must checkmate Black in seven moves. The catch is that all three of his queens are confined to the…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
The B List
A problem from the Eighth International Mathematical Olympiad, held in Sofia, Bulgaria, in July 1966 (contributed by the Soviet Union): In a mathematical…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
The Five Regiments
From Henry Dudeney: “The illustration represents a map (considerably simplified for our purpose) of a certain district on the Continent. The circles are…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Fences
Can you join the dots in this grid to form a continuous loop that never crosses or touches itself? Only horizontal and vertical lines between dots are allowed…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Around the Block
From Arthur Engel’s excellent Problem-Solving Strategies (1998): On a cube, mark all the vertices and all the midpoints of the faces. Can an enterprising…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Small World
A puzzle from the 1975-1976 issue of Eureka, the journal of the Cambridge University Mathematical Society: A jet fighter on the surface of the Earth is being…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Gunplay
A chestnut from physics: Two cannons are aimed directly at one another. One is on the floor of a valley, and the other is on a promontory. Neglecting air…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
The Rilke Cryptogram
In one copy of a 1942 edition of German historian Gert Buchheit’s biography of Rainer Maria Rilke, someone has glued a typewritten and hectographed…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Reckoning
A problem from the October 1961 issue of Eureka, the journal of the Cambridge University Mathematical Society: When A was three times as old as B was the year…
- Puzzles Archives - Futility Closet
Black and White
A puzzle in chess logic from The Batsford Chess Puzzle Book. Who made the last move, and what was it? (There’s no trick — everything is just as it…